A look at progress in 40 years since Colorado's Big Thompson flood of July 31, 1976

The Big Thompson flood of 1976 was one of three major flash floods during the span of five years in the 1970s that killed more than 450 people across the country -- tragic events that helped spur the modernization of NOAA’s National Weather Service flood forecasting system.

Arctic warming has thinned springtime sea ice across the Arctic Ocean. A new study shows that this alters the chemistry of the atmosphere near the Earth’s surface and may increase the amount of toxic mercury contaminating the region.

First study to quantify effect of oil and gas emissions on ozone problem

The first peer-reviewed study to quantify oil and gas emissions on Colorado's northern Front Range confirms that energy development is an important contributor to the region’s chronic ozone problem. The NOAA-CIRES research was published August 8 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

The amount of air pollutants in the atmospheric plume generated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was similar to a large city according to a new NOAA-led study published today in a special issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.